5 Reasons You Should Thank The Person Who Broke Your Heart

We’ve all had our hearts broken at one point or another. And you know what? We're all better people for it.

Sure, I never would have said something like this when I got my heart broken. I would have given anything to take back the moment of our breakup -- to take back everything we had together, even.

But life went on. And, somehow, with time, those feelings of regret and hate went away, too. In fact, I felt better. I felt so good that I even wanted to thank him for the experience.

You see, heartbreak is an awful but necessary part of life. It’s how we grow. It’s how we learn to survive. And, most importantly, it’s proof that life goes on.

Sometimes we get so focused on the sadness and the loneliness that accompanied that dark time, and we forget to be grateful for the person it made us: the better, stronger, more confident person who broke out of that dark shell.

Here are five reasons you should thank the person who broke your heart.

1. For teaching you that life goes on

When your heart is smashed into a million pieces by the one person you allowed yourself to trust with it, your entire world pauses.

Time freezes, and you're stuck in this dark, awful place.

But then you realize that time does, in fact, go on. You go to sleep, you wake up, and it’s a new day. And with each new day, you feel a little bit closer to who you were before you gave your heart away in the first place.

Heartbreak teaches you that life does not have to stop just because you got hurt. Your friends are still there. Your family is still there. There are still plenty of new days to embrace.

2. For making you stronger than you ever thought you could be

It’s funny -- heartbreak is emotional, but it feels physical, doesn’t it? It feels like someone actually physically ripped your heart out of your chest and smashed it against the wall.

You feel empty on the inside, and on the outside you are surrounded by reminders of what used to make you feel whole.

It's the sort of weakness that is all-encompassing. You feel like you were just swallowed into the belly of darkness and that there is no foreseeable escape -- that is, until something changes, and you find your way out.

That wonderful, miraculous moment where you learned you are f*cking STRONG always, always comes. One person is not capable of shattering you. You are strong enough to embrace immense sadness and you are powerful enough to overcome it.

3. For teaching you that you can have more than one "love of your life"

Because that’s what hurts the most, right? The feeling that you lost "the one." The heart-wrenching realization that you had what all of the songs and movies talk about, and you just let it slip right out of your hands. The fear that you'll never get another chance.

It's when you least expect it that you meet someone new, and it does happen again.

You realize that while he might have been "the one" at that moment, there was another "one" waiting for you somewhere down the line.

4. For raising your bar for next time

Love is patient. Love is kind. Love is also totally and completely blind. Blind to the point of “Oh, she’s blatantly cheating on me, but I don’t care because she’s a sex addict, and I love her.”

Blind to the point of “He hit me a few times when he got upset, but it’s okay because it only happens when he’s drunk, and he doesn’t know how to deal with how much he loves me.”

Love is so blind that it can make everything dark.

But when you fall out of love, you see your relationship for what it really was. Sure, maybe you weren't cheated on or abused, but you see what your relationship was lacking.

You learn what you deserve -- that you weren’t being treated right. And for next time, you have some contacts to bring along for your sh*tty eyesight.

5. For the time you had together

True heartbreak is a result of true love.

It’s so hard to see this, especially in the middle of everything, when you're so overcome with hate and grief. But when you come out of that grief and hate, that love seems so distant that it almost feels fake -- like a weird dream you for some reason still vaguely remember.

But it was there. And you have the person who broke your heart to thank.